Archive for month: September, 2014

It seems that white privileges and male privileges are real concerns in our today’s society

because many writers and scholars argue about those privileges. Peggy McIntosh in her essay

argues that white and male privileges exist overtly and covertly in U.S. Historically, we had all

kinds of racism and sexism in the United States. We had slavery, segregation, and men’s ultimate

power in society. But, in my opinion, Peggy McIntosh’s argument is more subjective rather than

objective. Peggy claims all sort of implicit and explicit white and male privileges without

supporting any evidence. Peggy has not done any research or experiment to support her claims.

Peggy just argues about her personal experiences and her ideal society. Therefore, I argue that

Peggy’s point of view is personal experience and more subjective.

However, Stulberg and Weinberg, in their book, Diversity in American Higher Education

argue that white privilege exist in schools in U.S. Stulberg and Weinberg support their arguments

by bringing many evidences. For instance, racial discrimination in schools and stereotyping can

dramatically change teacher-student interaction (Walker, 2007). They also argue that another

great deal of recent research suggest that racial stereotype are a part of everyday school life, and

this has a great negative impact for students of color (Ferguson, 2000). The disadvantage of

Black and Latino students take in many different forms, and Stulberg and Weinberg claim that

some teachers perceive low-income, Black, and Latino students as lower academic capability and

intelligence than white students. I assume that this book is more heavily contributes of liberal

and democrat point of view, and I believe conservatives have opposite and different point of

view from the writers of the book. Thus, I support those writers who support their point of views

by empirical evidences.

In my personal experiences, I have never felt or been in a situation to observe any kind

of implicit or explicit white privilege. In my all classes, I was treated equally. I am a psychology

student and a critical thinker, and I observe any social issues in society without judging people.

But I have never seen or felt white or male privilege, of course, being a male makes more

complicated to accept male privilege. I have been living in the United States for five years, and

sometimes it is hard for me to distinguish those privileges if they exist. I have born and rose in a

patriarchal society, however, I have always believed in equality. Back to my country, Iran, I was

strongly disagreeing about racism, sexism, and heterosexualism. And steel believe in equality in

all societies. I am familiar that how male are privilege in patriarchal society, but I need to study

more about male privilege in U.S. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from my classmates in last

presentation, but I was surprised to hear that some students felt that white privilege and male

privilege exist and they had some kind of experience about it. Furthermore, I hope this

educational journey teaches us how to prevent any kind of privilege, sexism, and racism.

In the previous class we had to present our “Who Am I?” presentations. We had to select one element of our identity and discuss how it has shaped our life in a day to day basis, our educational journey, future goals and overall our life as a whole. I enjoyed hearing my classmates’ presentations because I learned that I have a lot in common with most of my peers. It made me feel more at ease as well as connected with them. I also learned that a couple of my colleagues are the big sister in their family so I can empathize with them a lot since I am also the big sister in my family. A couple of students talked about how they wanted to make their parents proud by getting a degree and have a good career. I can relate a lot to them because not only is being a role model for my siblings my biggest motivator to succeed, but also to make my parents proud of me for my accomplishments. I thought it was interesting to hear how the majority of my peers want to get a college degree to set an example for the people they love and for their benefit. Overall, I feel privileged to have learned an element of their identity.

 

In chapter, Inside the K-12 Pipeline for Black and Latino Students, I was not shocked to learn that Blacks and Latinos have a huge disadvantage in the K-12 school system. While reading this chapter I recalled my own experience in middle and high school. In my high school about 10 percent of my peers were white and the majority of the teachers were white. I witness how teachers had more expectations from the white students than nonwhite students. I believe this inequality is the reason why some of my non-white peers felt discouraged. I felt the same until the school hired an American-Mexican history teacher in my sophomore year. It was her first year teaching and she shared with the class that she was a Stanford graduate. She talked about her own struggles and how she managed to beat the system by working hard to overcome many obstacles. She inspired me to continue my education after high school and beat the system even though it’s working against us Latinos.  The chapter, Testing, No Child Left Behind, and Educational Equity, was an eye-opener for me because after reading I realized that there is a vicious cycle in the K-12 system that will continue on unless the federal government steps in and increases public school funds. I thought a good example of these two chapters is the movie Freedom Writers. The other four articles I read were about White privilege. Although I do not relate to the articles I enjoyed reading them especially, 6 Things White Parents can do to raise Racially Conscious Children, because I believe we can all apply most of the ‘6 things’ when it comes to raising our children.

 

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!